This is how we respond to the joylessness of insular toxic bro culture
Progressives need to step up their influencer game.
I watched this video (below) on Instagram about why young white men are becoming republicans. It was a repost, so I don’t know anything about this guy, but I know that I was surprised to hear him hit the nail on the head.
In short, he says young white men are insulated in bro/wellness male-dominated spaces without female friendships and that creates misogynistic echo chambers where they dehumanize women, seeing them only as sex objects. The breeding ground for this beta culture is a cocktail of: individualism idealized/the Protestant ethic as explored by Max Weber, a sense entitlement, deep personal insecurity, and isolation.
I had some thoughts to add.
Right wing bro culture is joyless.
The whole paranoid, “you don’t get it/I did my own research” Joe Rogan-centric bro culture is devoid of actual creativity or dimension. It’s one sided. It’s fake news. It’s uninteresting. It gains its power in unearned smugness. It doesn’t make anything beautiful because it is imbalanced, rejects science and facts, and is without any respect for the feminine forces that create new life.
These young white men don’t know that when you dehumanize women, a hatred for yourself festers inside you. You hate the side of you that isn’t “man enough” and you hate your mother who made you.
(Side note: my graduate thesis from 20 years ago is kind of about exactly all of this.)
Men who want to dominate everything around them can get a sense of satisfaction out of their efforts to control others — for instance, if their girlfriend puts up being treated like shit — but it cannot bring them joy.
Joy comes through true connection and creation. These guys are on the shore, running away from waves of the seas of intimacy with their small-minded, oppressive ideas.
There is mother and there is whore, and we are the same.
Recently, we were at a Women’s March rally in D.C. and there were a few loitering red-hat MAGA young men who were being led around by a conventionally pretty, young white woman. It reminded me that there is always that Eva Braun in the group.
This cruel woman-hating woman acts as their manipulative, sometimes subservient “earth mother,” while all of us “whores” with our hairy pits and complicated feelings are othered and loathed. She is the one that legitimizes their shitty attitudes on women. She is the women who vote for Trump.
Who’s to blame? It doesn’t really matter.
Not all “gym culture” is bro culture, but there needs to be room in these spaces for women and people who are disabled. Check out Decolonizing Fitness.
As the world has evolved to rightfully be more accepting of people outside the binary or traditional gender or sexual identity “norms,” the patriarchy has felt a stronger impulse to rise up and strike down everyone else. It tries to, like I wrote above, dominate. However, the matriarchy is passive in its aggression. It riles up the language police to make people (even on their own side) feel insecure and these already small men on the internet really cannot take the criticism.
That said, the internet, not women, have made young men insecure.
The person who runs the account that posted that video commented something like, “we need to stop making fun of young men.” This infuriatingly misses the point.
I watch the internet with my young son who loves sports. YouTube shows him hyper-masculine stuff and I yell when I hear or see something problematic, and he changes it. The internet is quite obviously pushing vanity and unrealistic physical goals on young men, like the world has been doing to young women forever. Like have you heard of mewing? I try to devalue internet culture at home with humor so that my eight-year-old doesn’t develop actual body issues. (I never thought I’d write that sentence!)
Sadly, my knee-jerk reaction to bringing boys into the vanity fold was “good,” but the reality is it’s terrible. These unrealistic expectations destroy delicate egos and makes them easier to control. And who’s looking to control them but a wannabe dictator — there are quite a few out there. This is not a new phenomenon. Remember Mystery from VH1’s The Pickup Artist? It’s just that now there’s a Trump out there who uses these insecurities to further his populist agenda.
As detailed in Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It, boys are falling behind girls in education and in the workplace, which also isn’t doing wonders for their self-esteem. I should probably read this book before I press publish, but as middle aged mom during the holidays who’s looking for work in a world that doesn’t respect me or my contributions, I don’t have the time! Sucks, right?
There are some questions we need to be asking ourselves.
The narrative with incels has been: No one invited them to the party so they retreated to their moms’ basements. Now they’re coming after us at the ballot boxes.
I know it’s not our job to feel forced to invite them to our party. Our party is a better party. We know it, they know it, but they don’t quite fit in at our party. Their egos are hurt either way. It’s not on us to invite them.
But we want a more evolved world and need simple solutions to end this grotesque circle jerk that the patriarchy is hanging its hat on.
Do we want to create a healthier culture that is inclusive of young men? Do they have anything to offer us more than than their votes? What if these young men don’t want our culture anymore?
Well, I think they do have something to offer. I think they do want to be a part of the larger culture with all of its complexity. I think we do tend to be exclusive in rejecting people who make perceived mistakes or are conventional. But I also think we are rightfully tired of educating the ignorant.
I think we need the young men, maybe not at all of our parties, but in our orbits. They need us. They need our friendship, our perspectives, they need friends who are gays and girls.
Somehow we have to expand to absorb them.
How do we do that? Let’s try making left-leaning dude-bro influencers popular.
Start on the internet. Let’s get more young men like the guy in this video to make more videos like this and flood the internet with them to balance out the absolute macho moronic bullshit out there. And let’s make it fun! I mean, I feel like very obviously our side knows how to do that better than theirs.
The democrats need to throw money at these influencers and at podcasts that will interest them but also educate them. Show biz may be dominated by progressives and lefties, but these young men are consuming media on socials. Why are we not meeting them where they’re at?
They need to know that the patriarchy is unfulfilling and ugly.
My final message is that these guys need to learn that they don’t need to be these gross masculine caricatures to be worthy or have value.
Straight guys: Getting laid takes very little effort if you embrace a culture that includes and respects women. Women will be more interested in being part of your world if you’re a part of theirs. Watch some comedies, get some jokes, have some deep conversations, go to therapy after the gym. Rizz is not about your jawline, it’s about finding connection.
The left needs to embrace its own rizz. We’ve got some influencing to do, and to quote men on the internet:
Let’s go!